In a previous blog I have recommended three paths to instructing adolescents on how to avoid what Scripture calls fornication or sex before marriage. With the propaganda for universal contraception at younger and younger ages, ostensibly to avoid pregnancy and abortion regardless of the negative effects on growing bodies, such a path may prove difficult. Here is where Holy Spirit Arsenal comes in. It is a new program designed for post confirmation. Traditionally Catholic parents, even though they may not attend Sunday Mass regularly, often consider it beneficial to send their children to CCD or Catechism class. Here their children will encounter the sacraments of first communion, penance or reconciliation, and confirmation. The latter is generally seen as graduation from Catholic practice so that the crucial years of adolescence become a wasteland of Catholic instruction unless the student goes to a Catholic high school.
“We are standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. . ." - St John Paul II
This is where the program, Holy Spirit Arsenal, steps in. It is the contention of both Catholic teaching and the founder, Dr. J.F. Orsini, OP, PhD. that confirmation, in which the Holy Spirit is poured into the soul, is not the end but the beginning. It is designed to equip the person to be a missionary for Christ. This is especially important in our times. Orsini cites St. John Paul II, “We are standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. . .” He places his program under the auspices of Saints Dominic, Catherine of Siena and Paul V, all of whom defended Christendom at critical moments. It is basically a free education program to prepare the student to defend the Faith, whether it be in inter-religious dialogue, in politics, economy or business.
Dr. Orsini does not engage in pie-in-the sky rhetoric. He has authored a small book called Love is God, which begins with well-ordered romantic love between the sexes. His thesis is that all forms of love have God as their origin. Too often Catholics think they have to give up human love to find the divine. It is not love but lust they must reject. Human love found in the family is God’s creation. After all Jesus spent thirty years in a human family that taught him human love par excellence. Let us not forget that the family was the vehicle for the covenant in the Old Testament, as my book Holy Family, Model Not Exception shows. Dr. Orsini contends that only the Christian God is love unlike the supreme God of the Muslims, the Hindus or the Ancient Greeks.
Because of his background in education, business management and Catholic social teaching, as well as his commitment to a Thomistic perspective—he is a third order Dominican—Dr. Orsini is well equipped to guide young people through Holy Spirit Arsenal. He is also the father of six daughters and has an international background, being born in Vietnam and growing up in Morocco and France. He graduated from the top French business school, ESCP, and later earned an MBA and PhD from Wharton School.
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